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I've noticed that there are a few board-gamers on these forums, but no thread other than a few scatter shot suggestion threads, and the odd thread for specific games. High time we corrected that, I say.

So bring your questions, your play reports, your reviews and especially your general enthusiasm for dice, chits, cards, wooden blocks and paper money.
Looking for someone to play with? Check out the GWJ Online Boardgame Group!

As my kids (son almost 9, daughter nearing 7), they get more interested in board games (particularly my son). We've played a lot of Carcasonne; I find that if you remove farms entirely from the game for simplicity, it's a great game for kids. I've got Settlers of Catan as well, and my game-hating wife will actually play that on occasion to spend something resembling family time with everyone (my daughter likes to roll the dice and draw the cards).

As they get older, I suspect we'll play a lot of various board games. So, tagged and all.

"I would be insulted if I could figure out exactly what it means."
--*Legion*

Tagged - granted I still think GWJ needs a board game forum, but that's just me

I'm always amazed at how many people I discover actually have at least some knowledge of newer designer board games. Madison somehow manages to support three designer board game stores and I run into more people than I'd expect that have played or at least heard of Catan, Carcassonne and even games like Agricola and Dominion.

DanyBoy wrote:

I'll be back to post a proper impression later when I have time, but I wanted to say I played Imperial last night for the first time.

It's a very interesting game. I can see that it was a lot of depth and I can't wait to play more.

Imperial took quite awhile for me to warm up to. It has a pretty steep learning curve and is not very intuitive - the rules aren't too complex but it's hard to see how you play to win. I do enjoy it now, though, and it's one of our go-to six player games.

If you like the rondel mechanic, I highly recommend checking out Navegador. Mechanically it is a fairly traditional Euro-style game but it really shows off how cool the rondel is. Out of the three Mac Gerdts games I've played (Navegador, Imperial, Imperial 2030 and Antike), Navegador is hands-down my favorite right now.

Anybody have any others to suggest in this vein? Being fun up to six people is a plus, since most of these are only up to five (and really play best with 3-4).

I highly recommend 7 Wonders. It's a fun little civilization-themed card drafting game. Instead of building your deck like in Dominion, you pass hands of cards around and pick one card each round to play. Really easy to teach and plays fast - games are around a half hour. Best part is that it scales seamlessly from 3 to 7 players, something few games can do, and the play time really doesn't increase much. All players choose their cards simultaneously and you only directly interact with the players seated to your right and left, so it doesn't matter how many people are playing.

For 5-6 players I'm also a big fan of Ave Caesar. It's a card-driven chariot racing game. Play a card, move that number of spaces. First to cross the finish line after three laps wins, but only if you made one pit stop to hail Caesar on the way through. It's incredibly simple and plays fast but there's room for some fun tactical maneuvering and card play.

Some people enjoy Citadels with a bunch of people... and some people despise it as it can outstay it's welcome, particularly if people aren't familiar with the game.

Seems like most people enjoy Last Night on Earth, which can play with 6. If you like zombies, seems like you're likely to enjoy this one.

The gang over here enjoys Saboteur as a light game, though I know Dreaded Gazebo doesn't like it. It plays better with the rule that dwarves with broken equipment don't get booty.

There are plenty others that are supposed to be good, those are just the ones I have personal experience with. If your gang has interest in long, intense games, Twilight Imperium is supposed to play great with 5-6. 7 Wonders is supposed to be great, and I expect to get it eventually. Seems like a lot of games with a lot of players are YMMV games, as there tend to be a wider range of opinions on them. I'm just going with what I've seen catch on in my group.

I played Space Alert with a buddy over the weekend. It's very odd, and quite unlike most other games I've played. Once you've got the overly-complicated board set up, you start a CD playing, which lasts about 10 minutes. In that 10 minutes, it will announce the arrival of threats to your spaceship, and you have to plan your moves around the spaceship to recharge shields, power the reactor, fire various weapons at the threats, and more. By the end of the 10 minutes, you've laid out all of your moves, and you then move onto the resolution phase, where the encounter plays out based on all your pre-planned moves, and you see if (or in my experience, how) you screwed up.

The game itself is innovative and different, but the instructions are atrocious. It took us nearly 2 hours just to figure out what the hell was supposed to happen. It's a Czech game, and I get the impression that the instructions were translated by someone with a good grasp of Czech and English, but a terrible grasp of how to explain how a boardgame works.

My buddy has left the game at my place, so you can take it out for a spin if you come round and play some games with me.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

You've never known true joy until you've shaken a lich stick at someone.

Twilight Imperium is a fantastic game but you need to have a solid 5-6 hours (possibly more with six players) to dedicate to it and players willing to make that kind of commitment. It's tough to find the right crowd for a game like that. We don't get to table it up nearly often enough, but I always have fun when we do. I'm a sucker for big, long epic games though.

Battlestar Galactica is great, but I think it's best with five. I'd generally go with Shadows Over Camelot with six (or seven, of course) but would always play BSG over Camelot with five.

I've only played Alhambra a few times but it seemed to work well with six.

Power Grid plays six, but it's a longer game. I haven't enjoyed my experiences with 6 as much as with 4. The end stages of the game usually come down to only a couple of people vying for the lead, and adding extra players prolongs the process for all of them. I do like the game and I like the auction mechanic, but not for six.

We had a GWJ gaming get-together in Cleveland a couple Saturdays ago and I was hugely impressed by Small World. The idea of the declining civilizations and the random races is pretty cool. When I get some spare cash I definitely want to pick up my own copy.

I played Space Alert with a buddy over the weekend. It's very odd, and quite unlike most other games I've played. Once you've got the overly-complicated board set up, you start a CD playing, which lasts about 10 minutes. In that 10 minutes, it will announce the arrival of threats to your spaceship, and you have to plan your moves around the spaceship to recharge shields, power the reactor, fire various weapons at the threats, and more. By the end of the 10 minutes, you've laid out all of your moves, and you then move onto the resolution phase, where the encounter plays out based on all your pre-planned moves, and you see if (or in my experience, how) you screwed up.

The game itself is innovative and different, but the instructions are atrocious. It took us nearly 2 hours just to figure out what the hell was supposed to happen. It's a Czech game, and I get the impression that the instructions were translated by someone with a good grasp of Czech and English, but a terrible grasp of how to explain how a boardgame works.

My buddy has left the game at my place, so you can take it out for a spin if you come round and play some games with me.

I've heard a lot about Space Alert, and would love to try it out. It sounds like a hell of a trip, especially when you're figuring out how well your planning and teamwork went.

Gravey, I'm never sure, on a scale of 1-10, just how serious you are when you post. – Minarchist

I've heard a lot about Space Alert, and would love to try it out. It sounds like a hell of a trip, especially when you're figuring out how well your planning and teamwork went.

Space Alert is serious fun... with the right crowd. I've played with a couple of people that just completely shut down during the real-time part of the game. You need to be willing to speak up, give orders, make split-second decisions and not be afraid of making mistakes. If everyone is into it though, the game rocks. There's an expansion out recently I want to pick up as it adds campaign play which could be lots of fun. Certainly one of the more unique games out there.

Tagging for awesomeness. After IGD I started getting into it more and try to play with a local group; Dimmerswitch gifted me Pandemic and Saboteur for Christmas and those have been pretty awesome. These threads just make me sad for missing out on all the cool sounding ones, though.

Since leaving my job where I played games about 4 times a week over lunch, I've started hosting monthly boardgame nights. The first love of our group was Small World (40+ plays), then Dominion (stopped counting at 120+ plays) then Race For The Galaxy(over 100 plays). This is with all the expansions as well. As mentioned in the other thread, I've got 7 wonders coming for this weekend and we're getting really excited about it. Other favorites are Pandemic and Cosmic Encounter, and occasionally Cyclades, Last Night on Earth and Ticket to Ride Europe.

In general, we won't do a game that takes more than 1.5- 2 hours. When we have time for a 5 hours game, we'd rather play 3 other games instead.

BTW Minarchist, if you (and/or your crew) ever want to drive 1.5 hours south for gaming, you've got an invitation.

Played Shadows Over Camelot the first time this week, quite a fun game. It was the first time everyone played so it took some time to get familiar with the rules, the rule book is a little too verbose in its description, but halfway through the first game everyone seemed to get it. We played two games, one with five and one with seven people. For the first game we lucked out and didn't have a traitor, but we actually misunderstood the Fate card and revealed this to everyone halfway through the game. Probably a good thing since it was our first game. After myself and another knight had fallen to fighting siege engines foolishly, the other knights managed to scrape together a victory by finding the Holy Grail a couple of turns before the Black Forest would've been played. The second game we didn't go so well for the forces of good. We were actually doing well on white swords but lost track of the siege engines and the traitor just played the 12th siege engine to end the game. We were avoiding drawing black cards because one of the new players playing as Sir Percival using his special ability said the next black card might end the game, and we thought it was the fourth Saxon which we were close to beating but would've added two siege engines if we lost. It actually turned out to just be a Mercenary card. Still, a good time was had by all.

Castle Panic is a up-to-6 player game. It's a co-op fantasy themed game in which players fend of hordes of advancing monsters by trading and playing cards. A bit like a board game version of tower defense. A lot of social interactive planning. It's pretty light on rules and good for people who aren't into complex board games.

Race for the Galaxy goes up to 6 players with expansions. It's a bit like Puerto Rico but with cards. Like Dominion, it's mostly group solitaire with a little competitive player interaction, but the iconography and depth are really great if you're into that kind of thing. Not much social interaction, but it's neat to see what combo plays other people do.

Thunderstone, while only 5 players, might be worth a look if you like Dominion. It's similar, but instead of just playing tricks you're building a fantasy-themed party of adventures and equipment and fighting monsters for victory points. Lots of adding up numbers and figuring out card effects if you're into that.

And I'll throw in for Battlestar Galactica too. It's a little alarming for new players or people who aren't used to complex board games, but the social interaction element is great fun. Just make sure you have a good person running the game and keeping it moving.

I play a lot of Diplomacy, mostly online. The turns wind up running a week or so, but otherwise it's just as good as face to face.

Right now I'm waiting for Fall 1901 to resolve. That game gets to be a knuckle biter when you're waiting to see who stabs you in the back first.

Could you please post a link to where you play it online? Wisiwig and I are going to be playing our first game in a few weeks and the instructions alone are intimidating.

I'll also take this chance to pimp my board game weekend, KeithKon. I'll edit that into a link when I have something to link it to. We had the first one last year around labor day and I think we're looking to do it around the same time this year.

It's an up-to-6 players game that takes 2-3 hours. It's a game about making yourself rich. You do this with investments in the growing economies of the pre-WWI European powers. The neat bit is that whoever is the most heavily invested in a nation also controls that nation. (If a player is completely bought out and controls no nations, they become a Swiss banker, making it easier for them to invest more and gain control of a nation.) This management of the different nation's actions is the meat of the game: A player has to balance industrial expansion, military production, invading competing powers and expanding a nation's borders, increasing a nation's wealth or paying out said wealth to the investors (The players).

But since the game is based around making money, not conquering Europe, and since control of any nation can be bought for the right price, it makes for some very interesting player dynamics. For instance, in the game I played, France and Germany became fast allies once both the players in control of those nations invested in each other's holdings. Austria-Hungary was a back-water hole at the end of the game, since no-one was heavily invested in it, and no one had made moves to boost it's economy. It was just a pawn in the Russian-German war that broke out in the middle of the game, changing hands repeatedly.

The odd bit is you don't need to be a great administrator or genius tactician to do well. Just invest in the holdings of the players who are, and go along for the ride. This lead to my downfall, as I'd invested heavily in Britain, which looked poised to take over all the ocean spaces on the map by the middle of the game, but the player controlling Britain never went for it, so my investments didn't pay off in the end.

Definitely a very interesting game for those wanting to play something a bit different. The turns are quick and are full of decisions, but there's a lot of turns before the end, hence the length. If you've got a group with the right mindset, I'd definitely recommend it.

<+Vector_> I was imitating you, like a parrot imitating a dumber parrot